It's been a long week. It's also a cold morning, but I will be out, binoculars around my neck, soon.
However, I could not ignore this in the Guardian this morning:
Speaking on GB News, [Lee] Anderson said of Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London: “He's given our capital city away to his mates.
“I don't actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of Khan, and they've got control of London.”
I have watched the video.
This was blatant Islamophobia from Anderson, who is a Tory MP. It was worse from Tim Montgomerie the night before on Sophie Ridge on Sky.
I worked with Sadiq Khan as a school governor at one time. Anderson's portrayal could not be further from the person I knew.
We have reached the point in the UK where the greatest crime is anti-Semitism, which very often seems to be mis-described. Islamophobia is, howver, apparently permitted.
Those happily promoting this differentiation of treatment - and far too many are - are blatantly racist and must be called out for it.
I hope Ofcom got a lot of complaints about the Anderson broadcast.
Now it is time to go and reflect on the mess we're in and look for waders, ducks, egrets, raptors, finches and more.
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It’s a nice morning here & I can see Kentish Plovers on the beach (with vultures circling overhead) (Tarifa btw).
As for Anderson, a simple word substitution highlights the gormless racism/religiophobia of what he says:
“I don’t actually believe that the Jews/Zionists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London.”
This would cause the national press to go bonkers. But it’s apparently Ok to say it wrt muslims. What a pathetic country.
Where are you?
on the mark… wrt Lee Anderson!
Tarifa, southern Spain.
Bunch of vultures nesting near by (locals tried to tempt them with tories – but the vultures were not interested 🙂 got good taste vultures.
– & there is also a number of swallows over wintering. Plus buzzards etc etc. Climbed a local peak & saw 9 vultures circling – just something else.
Quite a few hedgehogs around, judging by the road side body count. Interesting place – out of season – can even swim in the Atlantic in a cossie. Locals dress for the north pole, I’m in tee shrit, shorts and sandals.
&, accommodation is cheap as chips out of season – with weather like UK/Belgium in…….May.
I will now submit my invoice covering promotion efforts to the Tarifa tourist board
Enjoy
Enjoy the day. Have you tried Lackford Lakes and also Bradfield Woods near where I live in Bury St Edmunds? (Lackford Lakes has been a good place to spot Adders in the past.)
(Trying not to think too much about the utter disgraceful and disgusting comments from Anderson and Braverman. Very sadly there probably will be similar comments in the future, as Sunak won’t really do anything.)
I have been to Lackford Lakes. A good idea for tomorrow.
But part of the fun of going to one place persistently is to watch the seasons change. Mating was in the air this morning – big time.
Lovely clear morning – good for twitchers.
Why on earth should we have to complain to Ofcom? As Mike Parr says – Anderson’s words do not need any interpretation – he is accusing a minority religious/ethnic group as ‘taking over’ London . If this isn’t inflammatory racism and an incitement to violence , what is? Can Ofcom decide for itself – rather than needing complaints?
If this isnt 1930’s Nazism as with the Jews what is it?
But even more sinister, BBC radio 4 World at One gave a lengthy platform to notorious ultra right Toby Young to say that we already had islamic blasphemy laws in this country and that these would be entrenched if Labour were elected.
All supposedly part of the report on the aftermath of the HoC motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza – which was never really mentioned.
BBC is now obviously happy to be seen to take its cue direct from the toxic government – in this instance which was to drown out the story of the ceasefire motion for Gaza by turning it into the ‘threat to MP’s from muslims’ story.
I wouldn’t have believed that possible .
“He’s given our [party] away to his mates.
“I don’t actually believe that the [neoliberal fascists] have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sunak], and they’ve got control of [the economy].”
It would appear that not only is racism tolerated in the Tory party it is de rigour as this week we have had former PM Liz Truss share a platform in the US with Steve Bannon A racist of renown.
Will either Anderson or truss have the whip withdrawn
I don’t think so
If Sunak does not remove the whip then racism will be a prerequisite of tory part membership.
I know the area of the country that Anderson comes from.
We play rugby union against them and many a time we’ve had to stop play because of foul language and abuse – and this is mini rugby U7 to U12. I’ve worked with housing workers in the area too. The North East Nottinghamshire area he is from has always had a militant side to it – in particular defending their rights and getting better working conditions during the mining era.
Unfortunately, since the area has become a bit of an employment desert, that militancy is now being pushed into supporting a different and more malignant set of ideas.
In Anderson’s defence, this is a part of the country – in the Midlands – that was abandoned by Thatcher in the 1980’s and from which anything from Labour was next to useless.
Anderson is a true representative of his area – angry, vengeful, heartless, lacking compassion or empathy because his life has been made brutal . He and his community remind me of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia – another group of people brutalised by their circumstances or the child soldier/killers we see in Africa. Hardened, unpersuadable. Resolute.
Tim Snyder writes about these people in his book ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ (2018).
It is a very simple. The victims of Neo-liberalism (and through the use of fascist political science) turn into its foot soldiers advocating the same for everyone.
I abhor Anderson Richard, although I have shard a pint at the pub with many like him over the years. They just want a strong leader to look after them. But the more courageous politicians from the Left that would have stopped him and others being created in the first place never appeared.
And this is the consequence.
Well, they’re here now.
The cunning of unreason…………….again.
“since the area has become a bit of an employment desert, that militancy is now being pushed into supporting a different and more malignant set of ideas.”
This was precisely the situation in Weimar Germany that allowed the rise of Nazism.
Given that neoliberalism has entirely abandoned full employment as a goal of macroeconomic policy, during a long period of UK economic stagnancy, and the BoE is actively using unemployment as a tool of manipulation for its inflation targets, all we need is a ‘strong’ leader to emerge and yes, there is a small coterie of high profile populists with access to modern media coverage to tick that box, especially with Ofcom Ignoring GBeebies permanent bias.. (as reported in today’s Guardian..)
So we have…..
1. A large minority of disillusioned and marginalised people in many regions:
2. Government willingly using unemployment as a tool of economic management;
3. A group of right wing populists with media access and exposure, and a high profile.
The runes are not especially auspicious for liberal democracy, arguably more observed in theory than practice in contemporary Britain anyway.
Good analysis
I saw a cartoon.
three men at a table.
One A has a pile of buns on his plate. B & C have only one each.
A says to B “he (C) is going to try to take your bun away from you.
Conservative strategy 2024- and for since for ever, really.
PSR, areas like this exist throughout the world.
I recently saw a screening of a documentary at SOAS, about a mining town, Meitian in South China where the pits had been closed in the early 1990s.
It had been a small mountain village until Mao decided that South China should be self sufficient in coal production in case there was a Rusian invasion from the North. It was uneconomic to extract the coal in the area but nevertheless people were recruited from all over China to work there.
Including families, over 100,000 people moved there. For a few decades they were far better off than anyone in the surrounding countryside, for instance, they could afford to own cars, a rarity in rural China at the time, and to travel to Guangzhou to buy luxury goods.
Then in the early 90’s the pits were closed as part of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. The Chinese government did provide some support but it was far from adequate and there was very little alternative work. Moreover they did not benefit from the “economic miracle” that Deng’s reforms were supposed to bring about.
The interviews with former miners had, in my view, been heavily edited to get the film past the censors but you could clearly sense the anger, bitterness and frustration they felt, often more in what they did not say than in what they did.
For Western audiences the film is entitled “Nostalgia”, but its Chinese title, “他鄉”, is ambiguous. In modern Chinese it means “their hometown” but in Classical Chinese, it means “nowhere.” I have a feeling there are nowheres all around the globe
I think this is a big issue
There is a village about ten minutes drive from here called No Place. It has a pub called the Beamish Mary, called after the local pit.
It’s no accident that 1 in 3 people the north east live in poverty, more than anywhere else in the country, and many of them in work.
Is George Galloway going to give “Keir Scammer” a bloody nose over his covert Islamophobia?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/24/a-total-total-disaster-galloway-and-danczuk-line-up-for-rochdale-push
The covert scammer at work:-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/24/starmer-set-up-own-labour-leadership-team-six-months-before-corbyns-2019-defeat
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-islamophobia-muslim-voters-israel-palestine-starmer/
Looks as though he’s had the whip withdrawn this afternoon. There is still some shame left in the Tory party.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/24/lee-anderson-stripped-of-tory-whip-over-sadiq-khan-comment
Good things can happen.
Reform have got their latest recruit
Hopefully it will be the only way Reform will have an MP, ever.
Yes. No b- election though.
I wonder how long before he is back to toryZ bubble?
I also wonder that
But maybe he wants to be a racist commentator rather a than an MP. I suspect it will pay better.
I am anti the Israeli government but support Jewish people. It is time we make a distinction between anti-Israel and anti-semitism because in my mind they are very different. I think this is what Corbin was trying to say for many years and was crucified over it.
Being anti-Netanyahu has nothing whatsoever to do with being anti-Semitic
Bill R said:
“It is time we make a distinction between anti-Israel and anti-semitism because in my mind they are very different.”
I think most people would agree with you. The problem stems from the IHRA “Working definition of antisemitism” which has been adopted by many institutions, including the Government (and the Labour party). It has been widely criticised for exactly what you highlight, that it blurs the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israeli government actions and actual antisemitism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_definition_of_antisemitism
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-governments-adoption-of-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/
Used to teach at Ashfield School, an excellent school since the late 1990s. My daughter lives in Andersons constituency. He is loathed by a lot of his constituents. There was a large neoNazi presence in the 90s, mostly to the North in Mansfield, but it is somewhat diminished. However this is the area of the UDM in the Miners strike and a base for the Thatcher-funded Roy Lynk. Anderson (a surface worker, not a face worker) combines all those influences, and is drinking mates with an ex neoNazi – it really is “that sort of area”, rough.
According to polls tory and reform together will have fewer votes than the labour candidate at the next election.
Morning.
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-02-23/politicians-face-growing-safety-fears-but-not-just-over-gaza
“Call for inquiry into growing ‘intimidation’ against MPs”.
The ‘intimidation’ that MP’s face is a consequence of their failure to be democratic representatives to their constituents and ‘The People’. The Westmonster bubble effect is the real cause. People are angry because of the blatantly obvious way MP are failing to serve the people.
Whipping is intimidation. Promotion within the parties is more about goosestepping to the party line than talent.
MSM focusing on the drama of the dishonourable gentleman rather than the substance of the discussion to distract from the real problems. Lines like ‘That was a knock out blow’. Equate the debates with war and violence narrative to sex it up.
‘If you are not hearing problems then you are not hearing the truth’. Colin Powell.
Before he joined with the Bush and the Repugs.
I’d support Lee’s position in commenting that a dysfunctional, yet allegedly representative democracy is always going to create problems for the representatives.
That can only be exacerbated in an elective plutocracy with increasingly wide divisions in equality and wealth, and disempowerment of large sections of society.
Amartya Sen defined poverty as ‘lack of agency’ – inability to self determine and often even to influence one’s future. That deprivation is evident everywhere.
Such alienation and anomie accelerates disaffection and increases violent helplessness with folks lashing out at politicians and the political process. Well. those who haven’t just given up.
Unfortunately political leaders using scapegoating to deflect from their own failures are sure to find a constituency.
There is a massive democratic defict in the UK and the ‘elective dictatorship’ shortly to be handed to SKS and Reeves is increasingly frightening.
The Overton window now seems to have the entire left spectrum of opinion boarded up. Crick, in analysing GE candidates, says the left has been “almost annihilated” in Labour selections under SKS with maybe only five left-wingers chosen of some 200 candidates.
Then we have central diktat further eroding our abiliies to self manage.
In Finland there are over 300 local authorities. In Scotland, with roughly the same population, there are 32. These are directed and controlled by Holyrood which has centralised considerably over the last decade.
Freezing council tax levels (the current boorach) merely removes one of the responses local communities can make in the administration of local issues and is another manifestation of disempowerment.
The level of engagement and participation in Finland has to be significantly higher on a day to day level and citizens are more active individually and collectively in their own government, hence having that agency that we do not.
I have seen no data that Finland is less well managed than Scotland at a local level, in fact the opposite appears to be the case.
The contradiction of the SNP position in wanting self government and self determination but then centralising from Holyrood is more than disappointing.
The last 14 years have seen progressive reduction of civil liberties, and curtailment of rioghts of protest with obvious attempts to silence opposing views evident in the ruling elite’s agenda. Three year jail sentences for anti fossil fuel protestors is a disgrace.
Gerrymandering has become endemic. Of course people are getting angrier. I am too.
Yes, people are angry because of the blatant ways MP are self serving with the lying, cheating, and defrauding of the public since 2019 going ballistic, and about as dysfunctional as a nuclear weapons trial.
To remedy this situation clearly requires much wider representation of the range of opinion across the political specrum, and one of the key factors is removal of the strait jacket of neoliberalism as the only macroeconomic policy option, that being pro corporation and anti people.
Richard’s emphasis on ‘tax fairness and equity is also pre-requisite.
Then we have decentralisation. Can we have too much democracy ? * Can there be a situation where people have too much agency and control of their own destinies ?
Scandi social democracy is underpinned by strong local government and self determination, and IMO that ought to be the model.
* The obvious answer is yes, when local mafias dominated by self interest take control. But that ‘big fish small pond’ dominance can be limited with checks and balances. Human frailties exist at all levels.
I know think that what Keir Scammer did last Wednesday in the House of Commons was double racism. Trying to turn both the Palestinian and Scottish people into the “Little People”:-
“The Labour motion notes ‘that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October 2023 cannot happen again.’ ”
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-the-lindsay-hoyle-gaza-ceasefire-vote-row-between-snp-conservatives-and-labour-explained
Here is the Labour amendment in full to the SNP motion:-
“That this house believes that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences and therefore must not take place; notes the intolerable loss of Palestinian life, the majority being women and children; condemns the terrorism of Hamas who continue to hold hostages; supports Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s calls for Hamas to release and return all hostages and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which means an immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides, noting that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October 2023 cannot happen again; therefore supports diplomatic mediation efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire; demands that rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza; further demands an end to settlement expansion and violence; urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures; calls for the UN Security Council to meet urgently; and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state, including working with international partners to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to rather than outcome of that process, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour.”
https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/85314/Html?subType=Standard#_idTextAnchor005
+3
I notice the labour motion only mentions the ground offensive in Rafah. The air offensive is allowed to happen, which is why Rafah was bombed yesterday and 8 people killed.
Whatever happened on Wednesday, the labour motion was passed, but you wouldn’t know that from the MSM.
On the same Wednesday 21 February 2024 the Israeli Knesset voted to reject “unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.” […] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, […] characterized the rumors [from Biden’s USA] as an existential threat, saying, “The Knesset came together in an overwhelming majority against the attempt to impose on us the establishment of a Palestinian state, which would not only fail to bring peace but would endanger the State of Israel.””
And that is why, in my opinion, any person or Party who believes in the myth of “a two-state solution” does not understand they are “being played” by Zionists until such time as no Palestinian remains “from the river to the sea”.
The link is not just to my source, it is a very good analysis of the current political impasse.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/biden-wont-let-israels-rejection-of-a-palestinian-state-interfere-with-his-delusions/
Sir Robert Buckland making the case for Proper Conservatism, PropCon, on R4 when challenged by Paddy on the recent words and deeds of Truss, Braverman and Anderson, PopCon.
Is there a meaningful distinction between PropCon and PopCon or am I just being anti-semantic?
I think the difference between PropCon and PopCon is as significant as the difference between Socialism and Communism.